In fiction, authors can break chapters into sections, often called scene breaks. These breaks, at their simplest, include only a single blank line. Flourished section breaks have a small graphic centered in the blank space and can be used to echo a book’s design aesthetic. In nonfiction, section breaks typically coincide with headings and therefore don’t need a graphical element to indicate a new section.

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The most common graphics include the rule, asterisk * (U+002A ) , ⁂ asterism (U+2042) and the historic vine leaf ❦ (U+2766), ❧ (U+2767) designed by Peter Schöffer II in 1517.

* * *

See the Unicode standards for dingbats under Symbols and Punctuation http://www.unicode.org/charts/

❦

Custom graphics work to create a cohesive book design. In V.E. Schwab’s novel Vicious, section breaks include a small black eye mask.

If the section break falls between two printed pages (lands at the bottom or top of a page), a break rendered as an empty line will be hard to distinguish as a break. It will also throw off the page layout by making it look like there is an abnormally wide footer or header. See Russell Harper’s article Space Breaks in Fiction in The Chicago Manual of Style’s CMOS Shop Talk for a look at how book designers have handled this.

Section Breaks in InDesign

Section breaks, like everything InDesign, start with creating a style. This method uses section breaks, a paragraph style, and markers. The marker needs to be text, but it can be any glyph. If you want to use a graphic, you will need to first turn the graphic into a font. See Indiscript’s IndyFont plugin.

To begin, insert a paragraph at a section location, place your glyph, and create a paragraph style.

I have added an asterism using the Courier font and centered it. Note: many fonts don’t include an asterism—the hunt for the right glyph is always a challenge.

Before you add more section breaks, take the time to create a section marker and replace the glyph with the section marker placeholder that way you can update all section markers in one edit.

First, copy the glyph to the clipboard (so it is ready to paste into the dialog box). Next, navigate to the first page in your document using the Pages panel. Then, open the Numbering & Section Options dialog box either via the Pages panel menu or via the toolbar Layout > Numbering & Section Options. Then paste the glyph in the box labeled Section Marker and hit ok.

Now return to your section break, delete the original glyph, and reinsert it using Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Section Marker.

For any additional sections, simply add a paragraph, apply the style, and insert the section marker.

You can edit the section using the tiny arrow that appears above the page icon in the Pages panel. Double-click the triangle to reopen the Numbering & Section Options dialog box for the section.

Add a different glyph or glyphs in the Section Marker box and hit ok. All instances of the section marker are updated.

Note: if you select a glyph from another font, you will need to update the paragraph style with the new font.

Note: When you open the Numbering & Section Options dialog box and click ok, you create a section in the document. If you are not at the start of your document, any pages between the start of the document and the page where you have created the section will not be part of that section. Therefore pasting the special character will not work because that location is not part of the section. If you will be adding multiple section divisions, then you will need to add the text for the section marker each time you create a new section.

Other Options in InDesign

If you don’t need to divide the document into sections, you can define a custom text variable using Type > Text Variables > Define, then New, Type > Custom Text. If the glyph is not included in the special character options for the dialog box, you will need to start by copying it, then open the new type variable dialog box, and paste it. You insert it using Type > Text Variables > Insert Variable (not Type > Insert Special Character). See https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/text-variables.html

Anchored objects can work as well. See https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/anchored-objects.html